Sandy, Bedfordshire: This collapsing structure is fenced off and offers tantalising glimpses of the area’s onion-growing heyday

E very derelict farm building houses tangible memories of lost lives or livelihoods. A chipped teacup from the last cuppa, a key without a lock, a horseshoe on the floor of a Hebridean blackhouse. Abandoned, discarded and forgotten objects spark my imagination with stories that can become more real than the buildings themselves.

Ever since the pandemic began, I have puzzled over one such object in a tumbledown ruin a 10-minute walk from my house. Before then, the onion barn – a two-storey weatherboarded wooden structure – had rarely received more than a sideways glance from the wheel of my car, for it was marooned on the shoulder of a dual carriageway. But when the rivers of traffic ran dry during the first lockdown, the A1 reverted in character to the old Great North Road, and the approach of a vehicle became an event. My daily exercise sometimes took me along the verge to the fence around this barn, a rare survivor out of dozens that sprang up in the 19th century, during Sandy’s onion-growing heyday.

Decades of gales and gravity have pulled down the rear half, unclad cladding from the front, exposed timbers, shed clay pantiles from the roof, and dislodged others to hang precariously over the eaves. Posts along the open-fronted ground floor still support the loft, where the onions were hung up to dry and stored. Long metal hooks hang useless over a band of narrow slats, where shutters once opened to air the crop. In common with other onion barns of the area, there are no stairs from ground level to the first floor, only a small rectangular hatch through which workers would poke a ladder to ascend into the reeky upper storey.

Standing before the doorless frame of the loft, I spied the oddest of leftovers. Facing towards the hatch, as if awaiting a head poking up through the gap, is a simple but elegant chair. It has a high back with gentle curvature and a carved pattern where a tired labourer’s spine would rest. Why was it left here? That question will gnaw at me long after the whole barn has fallen.

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